Setting up advice

Hi

Can anyone give me any tips on building up a client base & how long it usually takes. I qualified in Holistic Massage & MLD for the face in August & have made myself available full time to dedicate myself to my new career. I advertise every week in a local magazine & although i have gained a handful of clients i would appreciate advice on how much advertising to do which is difficult when on a very tight budget.

I am based in Kent and i am also looking for premises to rent in an established clinic however most places i approach are already full of therapists, it seems that lots of people have given up their 'normal' jobs to become therapists, making it a very competitive market

Rebecca,
I have been in practice for just over a year now and I have found the best source of clients came from getting myself a website. I gain between 4-10 new clients a month (I only work part time but this is more than enough to keep me busy). Once you get the clients the main thing is to maintain contact with them. I produce a quaterly newsletter, send birthday cards, Christmas cards, follow up the first appointment with a 'Welcome letter'. I also did a customer satusfaction survey after about six months to all my cleinst letting them know that I value their comments asking them what they thought of the therapist (myself), the room, the treatment in general and if they could make any suggestions that would make their visit more special. This worked a treat.
I am really pleased with how the business has taken off but I think the main thing is to maintain the customer contact.
Hope this helps.
Julie

Many thanks for your reply, sorry to not have responded sooner. I was wondering if you could let me have your website address, what you have done sounds great. Did you use a company to set up your website/how did you go about it?

I would also quite like to have a look at your website. Are you doing anything special regarding search words etc or Meta tags (I think that is what they are called). I have just started in business myself and ordered the book that was suggested in this forum. It takes about 2-3 weeks for Amazon to ship it, which is a shame, but hopeuflly it should have a lot of interesting ideas.

I find the hardest part of setting up is that the most effective advertising machine, word of mouth, takes quite a while to get going.

I have already done some leaflets in the areas that I have rented rooms and I have had my first call seeking an illegal service. No idea how he found my number - I was not exactly in the mood to ask at the time... Have you had experiences of this. How frequent would you say that kind of call is?

Has anyone tried advertising on vehicles? I am just looking into getting a quote for putting my company name on my car. It costs the same as sticking an advert in a paper, but it will last for 3-4 years. Does anyone see any possible issues with this?